We lost power again and I'm back to no video. Tried rebooting without connecting the cables and no go. Tried guided setup and still no video. I guess the next thing will be to pull the power and let it sit an hour or so. I can't believe no one caught this when this release was in beta testing.

My DMS has had a long standing problem (4 years) where the DVD doesn't work and anytime you accidentally press the button on the remote, you have to restart the DMS to make it work. My daughter did this last night, now I don't get signal.

My SD-H400 won't work with a comcast set top box either. When I try to run guided setup for comcast cable, then I can't receive the signal from the comcast set top box. Both the composite and RF inputs are dead.

But it will work with an over the air digital to analog converter, analog cable or a Direct TV set top box.

this has happened to me recently also, and i am still researching/resolving. has your cable provider recently went to an all digital format, no longer broadcasting any analog signals? this could be the issue - call them and ask. my understanding is that even though tivo units will not be affected by the conversion, the toshiba units only support analog signal, so it is possible that we may have to convert the signal back to analog. (yes seems a step backwards to me also) search the DTA threads as was suggested to me, and verify with your provider. i will post back what i find and whether i am able to resolve, or if i will require this additional dta box. i have toshiba sd400 and currently use a digital cable box with a serial port, i really do not want to go back to an ir blaster if i can avoid it.
but back to my dilemna, if i put the tivo on standby and use the cable box remote i can view all channels perfectly. if i turn on the tivo i have a black screen and a searching for signal warning on ALL channels. this happened same week charter had a channel line up change which i suspect involved moving all channels to an all digital format. the tivo functions normally other than being able to veiw or record live tv.
running guided set up again, restarting dve, or rebooting my cable signal has had no result. the first tech call to charter suggested my tivo was the issue but wanted to schedule a service call, i declined. suggested their dvr, no thanks. tivo support and forum research has led to my current opinion, tho i will admit i do not yet know enough about this to advise anyone, just relaying what i have found and hope it will help or make sense to someone in need of a suggestion on where to start or what to try next.

My experience with the sd-h400 with TIVO basic was it would work with Comcast analog cable straight in from the wall. If I tried to use it with the Comcast set top box, the screen would be black and I could not complete guided setup. I then tried the same sd-h400 with direct TV using their set top box and it works perfectly. The same SD-H400 will also work with an OTA converter box.

I'm having the same problem that others report. I have a Toshiba SD-H400 with Basic Tivo that is about 5 years old. After a power blip about June 11, 2010, the unit says that no signal is received on any channel. I receive the signal over the air using a digital to analog converter box. This has worked fine for the past year. I tested the digital to analog box and it works with the TV. I've restarted the Tivo and performed a guided setup with the wires connected and with the wires disconnected, but I still get no signal. Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

i have confirmed with my provider that they have NOT gone to a full digital format, there are still some channels broadcasting in analog although my toshiba unit is not recieving signal from my digital cable box on any channel. as i stated prev all channels work fine direct from my cable box with tivo on standby. this happened around same approximate time as prev poster, tho i am not positive of what exact day.
any help to get this unit going would be much appreciated. i am wondering if the tuner itself could have died leaving the tivo hard drive functioning fine. if this is the case, can that be replaced on a lifetime unit, or could i just put it in another room without a cable box, and just transfer movies to it for the kids to watch, and just not be able to use it to view or record live tv. is it even worth it to try to fix it knowing all digital is coming eventually to my area.
i am a total loss at where to turn now. i will be grateful for any suggestions to try, or threads to research for further information. thank you so much.

thanks for a reply, and i did just that. i moved the unit to another room without a cable box, ran the cable direct and reran guided setup. tivo still will not pick up a signal, tho the tv was playing 2-13 on its own and still will if i turn off the tivo. the tivo does still connect to service, and shows now playing. plus we can play games, etc. now i have basically moved a bunch of kid shows to it and figure i can keep it in the kids room and let them watch off the now playing list, it just wont record new shows, or show live tv. i can transfer them from another tivo tho, so getting some use. now that we know this... is there anything i can do, or worth doing to bring my tivo back to receiving live tv? i am really still satisfies with my series 2 units as long as they will still function. i have a dual tuner in another room.
another question, if i bought another of these units with only basic 3day guide service, can you still transfer shows room to room on your network, or no?

thanks for a reply, and i did just that. i moved the unit to another room without a cable box, ran the cable direct and reran guided setup. tivo still will not pick up a signal, tho the tv was playing 2-13 on its own and still will if i turn off the tivo. the tivo does still connect to service, and shows now playing. plus we can play games, etc. now i have basically moved a bunch of kid shows to it and figure i can keep it in the kids room and let them watch off the now playing list, it just wont record new shows, or show live tv. i can transfer them from another tivo tho, so getting some use. now that we know this... is there anything i can do, or worth doing to bring my tivo back to receiving live tv? i am really still satisfies with my series 2 units as long as they will still function. i have a dual tuner in another room.
another question, if i bought another of these units with only basic 3day guide service, can you still transfer shows room to room on your network, or no?

I wanted to add my input, as this has recently become an issue with me. I have had an SD-H400 for about six years now, and I have never really had a problem. I am currently using Cox Cable in Phoenix with Basic Lifetime Service (no fee).

Today, after moving the Toshiba Tivo around to make way for the new Tivo Premiere, all of the sudden it isn't working right.

Here are a few things I have noticed:

The Tuner does work, since I will continue to get a cable signal through the Tivo (when I watch the regular channels on the TV), even though the Tivo itself does not pick up any signal. All I get on the Tivo is the black screen with the television info at the top, and a message that says " Searching for signal on: Basic Cable In. See Messages & Setting/Troubleshooting for info 

When I turn the Tivo off, the yellow light on the "Live TV" button no longer stays lit, as it has been doing for months. I do, however, sometimes (not always) have the yellow Live TV button illuminated when attempting to watch Live TV, but I am still not seeing anything other than the blank screen and the "Searching for signal" statement. I hit the DVD button on the remote, and the DVD player works fine, but when I then hit Live TV on the remote, I get the black screen, but the DVD green light on the front of the Tivo remains illuminated.

When turning onto Live TV, either through hitting the button on the remote, selecting it from Tivo Central, or actually hitting the button on the Tivo itself, I don't hear the normal click that I would usually hear when I turn on Live TV.

I have unplugged it and plugged it back in a few times, and nothing changes

I have done guided setup, and nothing changes

I have upgraded all the software, and nothing changes

As mentioned with other posts, I can watch recorded shows, just not live TV, and I can't record new shows (unless I want to record a black screen).

I've also noticed the remote acting slower. It takes multiple hits to do anything. I haven't had this problem before, but maybe the batteries are just going bad, but I doubt it. On the other hand, I can control everything from the front of the Tivo with no delay.

Now here is the interesting part. About two months ago, I changed out (upgraded) the original 80GB hard drive and put in a 320 GB hard drive with an image based on my original 80GB hard drive.

There was nothing wrong with my 80GB, I just wanted something bigger.

So, while I kept restarting the system, and doing everything I could with the newer 320 GB hard drive in there, with no success, when I left everything else the same, unplug the Tivo, replace the 320 GB hard drive with the original 80GB hard drive, everything works perfectly.

All of the sudden there is no black screen, and the cable works perfectly. I even fully upgraded the software by connecting to Tivo with the 80GB hard drive, and it still works perfectly  no more black screen.

I cant understand why this black screen problem would be a hard drive issue, but something strange is going on.

I then left everything the same, took off the 80 GB drive, put back on the 320 GB drive, and had no luck. The black screen is back. I tried a few different things with the 320 GB drive installed, and it always resulted in the black screen.

So I decided to put the 80 GB drive back on  the one that worked and was fully upgraded just an hour ago  and now that one has the black screen.

One thing I noticed is that when I hit the Live TV button, I saw a new screen I had never seen before, which had a big black and white swirly symbol in the middle, and the words Preparing Channel Information, Please Wait at the top.

My thought is that some new service update is the cause of this problem.

Hopefully Tivo will fix it.

My Toshiba RS-TX60 is working fine, as is the Tivo Premiere.

Also, I just happened to have bought two more Toshiba SD-H400 Tivos from Ebay, and I am going to see what the deal is with those. One of them was reported to be broken, but the description sounds very similar to this black screen thing. I am going to try to put the 320 GB drive in the working one from Ebay to see if it truly is the drive, or if it is something else.

I will try to keep this forum posted with my conclusions, but I really really think it is a Tivo Upgrade Software Issue.

I literally spent all day trying to figure this out. I can&#8217;t say that I have absolutely done it, but I may have narrowed some things down.

My thought now is that it has to either do with electricity or some sort of wireless signal.

I recently purchased a Samsung LCD TV, and a Tivo Premiere, and I think possibly one of those is sending out a kill signal to the Toshiba Tivo. However, that doesn&#8217;t explain all the problems I have been having. I think there is a chance it is an electrical issue as well.

Here is my advice to anyone who is having this problem. Unplug the Tivo, take it into another room with a cable nub (wall outlet) or other cable connection, hook the Tivo up to a different TV, in that different room, with only the Tivo and TV plugged into the wall outlet, and a simple connection from the Tivo to the TV. For example: cable from wall to Tivo; RCA (composite) yellow from Tivo to TV; power from wall to both the Tivo and TV.

I have pages and pages of notes outlining my different attempts to figure all this out. I have plugged the same Tivo into different cable nubs throughout the house, into different electrical outlets, with different hard drives installed, and even using 30 foot cables and extension cords to try to shake things up a bit.

For some reason, I was consistently able to get the Tivo with the original 80 GB hard drive to work in the Guest Bedroom with only a TV and Tivo plugged into an outlet, but was also consistently UNABLE to get the Tivo to work in the Master Bedroom plugged into the new Samsung LCD TV and next to the new Tivo Premiere. This is what led me to believe that it is possibly a wireless signal thing that is being sent out by the Samsung or the Premiere. I did notice that the Samsung LCD has some sort of Anynet thing that is supposed to help make things work together. Note: I have a Humax Tivo plugged into the Samsung LCD, next to the Tivo Premiere, and it is working without a problem.

Interestingly, I was able to get a picture on the LCD in the Master Bedroom when I set up the Tivo to run in the Guest Bedroom, then ran a 30 foot RCA (composite) yellow cable from the guest bedroom to the Samsung LCD TV in the Master Bedroom. I have so far been unable to get the Tivo itself to work in the same room as the Samsung LCD, which also has the Tivo Premiere hooked up to it, which makes me think that something in there is affecting the Tivo itself, but does not affect the RCA (composite) cable when I run it 30 feet down the hall.

I am pretty sure, based on my experiments, that although the black screen, when things aren&#8217;t working, says &#8220; Searching for Signal &#8221; the problem has nothing to do with the cable itself. It is possible it has to do with the cable nub coming out of the wall, but I have hooked the Toshiba Tivo up to three different cables, in two different locations, and they all work perfectly. The only problem is when I hook up the Tivo using any cable with a cable nub located anywhere near the Samsung LCD TV and the Tivo Premiere.

I could further the experiment, and try to set the Tivo up in the same room, with the LCD TV unplugged, but I finally got the Toshiba Tivo hooked up in the Den, working perfectly (or so I thought, read below), and I don&#8217;t want to mess with it.

Here are a few aberrations with my experiments:
&#8226; When I plugged the Tivo in the Guest Bedroom - where it was consistently working perfectly &#8211; but I used a heavy duty extension cord, all I got was the black screen with no Live TV.
&#8226; Even in the guest bedroom, where the Tivo was consistently working perfectly with the original 80 GB hard drive installed, I could never get it to work with the 320 GB hard drive that I have been using for the past two months. However, when I finally attempted to set up the Tivo in the Den, and the 80 GB drive worked, I unplugged the power to the Tivo, replaced the 80 GB drive with the 320 GB drive, and for the first time in days, the 320 GB drive was getting a Live TV signal. Every time I tried in the past few days to get things to work with the 320 GB drive, all I got was the black screen
&#8226; When I was able to get the 320 GB drive working in the Den with the cable coming out of the wall, I unplugged the cable from the back, split the signal from the wall to go into the Toshiba SD-H400 Tivo, and also a Toshiba RS-TX60, and there were no problems with the signal to either of them
&#8226; When I put the Toshiba SD-H400 as the only Tivo receiving a signal from the wall, and let it run with live TV, exactly 20 minutes later, the picture started to digitize, and you could hear the hard drive making some weird skipping around noise. When I unplugged the cable from the back, plugged it back in, changed channels, it worked fine again&#8230; for about 30 minutes, then digitized again. I ended up doing a clear and delete everything, and I think my two month old 320 GB hard drive ended up dying. They don&#8217;t make em like they used to.
&#8226; When I was able to get the 80 GB drive to show Live TV in the guest bedroom, but was unable to get the 320 GB drive to show Live TV in the guest bedroom, they were both running off the same version of Tivo software: 9.3.2b-01-2-264
&#8226; When the Live TV worked, the yellow Live TV button on the front was always lit. When I did not get Live TV, the yellow Live TV button on the front was never lit

DIFFERENT UPDATE:

After finally setting up my original 80 GB hard drive in my SD-H400, and having it run for a few hours in the Den, everything seems to be working perfectly.

I then moved on to one of my Ebay purchases &#8211; a Toshiba SD-H400 that was known to have a problematic tuner. When I opened it up, I could see that you could spin the RF In nub, and it was very loose. I could get a TV signal if I held the Coaxial cable in at just the right angle, but any slight movement and the signal was gone.

So I did a full clear and delete, and tried to hold the cable in at just the right angle, but I got tired of that. So I unplugged the Tivo, opened up the lid, and found the metal housing of the RF (coaxial) nubs. I then pried the side closest to the perimeter open, which was the safest and best thing to do. There are little clips all around, and I just took a screwdriver to pry them off until the side just popped off.

Inside I saw that there was a piece of metal that was supposed to connect from the RF In nub to another piece of metal inside the metal housing. It was broken &#8211; the nub had been turned too hard by the previous owner that it snapped apart. I started working on it, while the Tivo was plugged in and on.

Here is what I found. When the metal between the nub and inside the housing was not touching, there was no signal to the cable, and the yellow Live TV light was not lit. Also, the black screen had &#8220;Searching for Signal.&#8221; This is exactly the same thing that has been happening with my other Tivo, and with other people&#8217;s Tivos.

So, while the Tivo was running, and the cable was plugged in from the wall to the loose RF In nub, I stuck a metal screwdriver between the broken pieces of metal, and all of the sudden, I got a picture on Live TV, and the yellow Live TV light on the front panel of the Tivo lit up.

Maybe all of our problems that we are having lately are caused by weak metal inside the RF housing.

All I know is that I was able to temporarily fix it by putting a metal screwdriver between the two pieces of metal, and after a few attempts, I was able to bend the metal together enough so that I would get Live TV without having to hold something in place.

So, if you want to test to see if the metal is a problem in your RF In nub, gently turn your RF In nub and see if it moves, or jiggles. If it does, the metal might be weak, and you may want to try to open up the RF housing inside the TIvo and bend the metal pieces together, or solder it back together &#8211; something I don&#8217;t know how to do. There is a screw between the two RF nubs on the back of the Tivo (seen from the outside). You do not need to remove that screw.

By the way, I have no electrical background. If I can open up a Tivo and fiddle around with it, you can too. Of course, don&#8217;t hold me responsible if you further break your Tivo. However, I have been opening up my Tivos for years now, and have fixed the DVD Loading problems that I used to get &#8211; it is simply caused by dust &#8211; I wrote another posting on solving that issue. I haven&#8217;t lost a Tivo yet.

When you open up your Tivo, just be sure to stay away from the battery-looking things on the inside near where you would plug in the electrical cord. I only know that from reading other posts &#8211; supposedly they will hold a charge after the electricity is cut off. Best to stay away from all the battery looking things.

I hope this helps someone, and if you have what I call a &#8220;perpetual loading&#8221; problem on your DVD player, here is my other post:

I've been having this problem as of late as well. I hadn't touched by RF IN connection for a few years, but then Comcast switched to all digital in my area. When I initially set up the Comcast DTA, I didn't have any problems, but then one day I restarted the unit and ever since I've been unable to consistently get a good signal from the RF IN.

I've taken the unit apart as suggested above and I don't see anything that is loose. When using the stripped down analog signal from Comcast, I am able to get the signal to pass through to the TV if the Tivo is off. When when the unit is on, it's just black. Usually. Sometime I miraculously have a good signal, but I never seen to be able to maintain that in moving the unit from where I've been working on it back into my entertainment center.

Does anyone have any other suggestion of solutions that have worked for them?

Make it another one doing the same thing. I'm thinking a software update broke something in our units. The kids reported a problem recording & with Live TV a couple weeks ago - I don't use this unit myself anymore it's basically just for kids programming.

Finally took a look at it tonight and I have the same problem. I use Dish with the RCA inputs and it shows no signal. Took it over to the neighbor's and hooked directly into the cable, ran through guided setup and also no signal - so I'm ruling out a 'connector' issue.

Anyone know when the last operating software update happened? Wonder if anyone's called TiVo yet? May have to do that tomorrow. There's so few of these left to begin with I doubt their software is properly tested with them before release.

I have contacted Tivo, and they said that there has been no software update to this model in a while.

So here is the latest with my situation:

I put in my &#8220;upgraded&#8221; 320 GB drive, and I finally got the Tivo working, with a picture on Live TV. I just kept unplugging and plugging it back in until I got Live TV actually showing up. By the way, I am just using the free Basic Tivo, with the 3-day guide.

I let the Tivo run for about a week with no signal loss, and no problems at all. During the middle of the week, I chanced things and unplugged the RF IN, just to see if I would have any problems when I plugged it back in. No problems at all.

After a week of just letting it run &#8211; showing Live TV &#8211; NOT recording anything, without any problems, I decided it was time to see if I could start recording stuff.

I recorded a bunch of stuff, initially without problems. Then, after recording maybe 10 hour-long shows, the Live TV cut off, I had a gray ( grey ) screen (I would not call it black), and nothing else. There was no text, no nothing&#8230; just gray. The yellow button on Live TV was lit, and the power button was on, even the red recording light was on, but I could not do anything. Hitting Live TV, or the Tivo Button, or the Power button would do nothing. I had to unplug it.

I unplugged the Tivo, plugged it back in, it seems to be working correctly. I checked to see, and it partially recorded 21 minutes of a half hour show. It did not actually record the gray screen. I thought that maybe it was recording over a bad space on the hard drive, so I left that partial recording alone, and continued trying to record.

It never got to my next scheduled recording. That gray screen was back.

I did a clear and delete everything. Started recording shows again. Got about 10 hour-long shows recorded, and the same problem occurred &#8211; gray screen.

I could unplug the Tivo, plug it back in, and it seemed to be working fine, and I could even start recording some other things, but eventually, I would hit that gray screen again.

I am thinking it is a bad hard drive &#8211; and again, this is the one I bought just a few months ago.

So I reinstalled my original 80 GB hard drive. When I started it up, there was no signal through Live TV, and I got that &#8220; Searching for Signal &#8221; thing again.

I immediately unplugged the Tivo, and plugged it back in, although this time, I didn&#8217;t put the electrical plug so hard into the Tivo. It was still in there tight, just not all the way, and now, that 80 GB original hard drive does show Live TV programming.

Nothing changed, nothing else was touched, it was just unplugging the electrical cord, and plugging it back in. That was the difference between it showing Live TV and not showing Live TV.

I am going to let it run for a while, then I will start recording and see if there is a problem.

I, again, recommend taking the Tivo into another room, and just keep unplugging and replugging it back in until, for some reason, you get a cable signal.

i also called tivo and was told there were no software updates, tho the lady did not want to talk to me about this unit, she kept referring me to toshiba. i have not called toshiba. since i lost signal in the room i used it in for last 3 years, and then moved it to another room and hooked directly to the cable rf in... i still have no signal, have reran guided setup until i want to scream, and thought i had given up. maybe i have. i thank you briandsloan for your very detailed and helpful posts, oddly since i have moved the tivo and decided to just use it as a satellite unit, the dvd player has developed issues also. first the player will not open, it did prev to moving it. if i open the tray by hand, and tell it to open then pull it out, i can load a disc, but it wont read it. i hesitate to do all you mention in your other post - for now, bcz i am afraid i will make things worse, do you think same issue may be causing it not to open at all for me. other problem is that now this tivo is at the opposite end of house from my router / adapter and i am getting such a low signal, it takes hours to transfer a movie from one box to the other. any other suggestions you have are much appreciated. i do not want to upgrade and lose the ability to transfer from box to box, so also need yet another tivo to replace the one in my bedroom. there is just no going back once you have tivo, i dont know how anyone does without it. thanks for any and all help to be or that has been offered.

This is way too wierd - there's either something buggy in the code related to the date or there is some hardware lifecycle issue here but that seems really unlikely given that we all have different temperature cycling, hard drives etc. Several dispersed units have died in the same way in such a short period - it really doesn't seem like hardware to me. (Final assembly test software is what I do everyday at work.)

Brian - did your happen to check your software version on the old drive before and after it stopped working?

My original drive was cooked when I replaced it probably 4 or 5 years ago. I've got a 200GB drive around here somewhere from one of my PCs if I can find it I'll try and set that one up with my image from back then and see if it suddenly works. (Though it got pulled out of service for acting flaky in the first place - never should have bought a Seagate.)